Hamas’ objective: Get Israel to kill as many Palestinians as possible

The Palestinian State is more fiction than real. Rather than a single state, it is split — geographically and politically — between the Fatah-ruled West Bank and the Hamas-ruled Gaza or Gaza Strip.

Hamas is designated as a terrorist organization by Israel and a number of Western and non-Western governments, including the United States, Canada, the European Union, Jordan, Egypt and Japan.

We are in the 4th week of a renewed war between Israel and the Hamas Palestinians in Gaza. Hamas has fired more than 500 rockets at Tel Aviv and other population centers in Israel. Those rockets terrorize Israelis but have inflicted few casualties due to Israel’s “Iron Dome” air-defense missile system that, according to the Israeli Army, intercepted and shot down 90% of the rockets.

Israel has retaliated in reaction to Hama’s rockets. In contrast to the ineffectiveness of Hamas’ rockets, Israeli air strikes against Gaza has exacted a death toll of more than 1,300 (vs. 53 on the Israeli side), including a 60-year-old Christian woman, according to Vatican Radio. (There are 310 Christian families live in Gaza.)

Palestinians constitute the overwhelming majority of those killed in Gaza. Among them, 80% are civilians, according to Caritas Jerusalem Director Fr. Raed Abusahliah. In addition to those killed, more than 7,000 people have been injured, thousands of homes have been completely destroyed, and more than 30,000 partially damaged.

A distraught Fr. Raed lamented that “in Gaza some 56 families were completely killed! 10 members of the same family – 18 people from the same family. This means 56 (entire) families were completely destroyed – they don’t exist anymore! This is terrible and dramatic. They have to stop. I am describing the situation but to see the photos and hear these stories, it’s really beyond your imagination! It’s like in the Second World War which means whole(sale) destruction. They are targeting everybody: civilians, women, children and hospitals.”

In an article in The Atlantic (via Defense One), Jeffrey Goldberg offers a disturbing reason for why Hamas continues to bombard Israel at great cost to Palestinian lives. Goldberg observes:

There is no doubt that Hamas could protect Palestinian lives by ceasing its current campaign to end Israeli lives. The decision is Hamas’s. As the secretary-general of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, said earlier this week, “We face the risk of an all-out escalation in Israel and Gaza, with the threat of a ground offensive still palpable—and preventable only if Hamas stops rocket firing.”

But Hamas continues to fire its rockets at Israel, and in retaliation Israel continues to fire back, resulting Gaza’s massive casualties. That has prompted Mahmoud Abbas, the sometimes moderate, often ineffectual leader of the Palestinian Authority, to ask his rivals in Hamas a question that other bewildered people are also asking: “What are you trying to achieve by sending rockets?”

Golberg’s answer to Abbas’s question is:

Hamas is trying to get Israel to kill as many Palestinians as possible.

Goldberg writes:

Dead Palestinians represent a crucial propaganda victory for the nihilists of Hamas. It is perverse, but true. It is also the best possible explanation for Hamas’s behavior, because Hamas has no other plausible strategic goal here.

The men who run Hamas, engineers and doctors and lawyers by training, are smart enough to understand that though they wish to bring about the annihilation of the Jewish state and to replace it with a Muslim Brotherhood state (Hamas is the Palestinian branch of the Brotherhood), they are in no position to do so. Hamas is a militarily weak group, mostly friendless, that is firing rockets at the civilians of a powerful neighboring state. […]

The men who run Hamas—the ones hiding in bunkers deep underground, the ones who send other people’s children to their deaths as suicide bombers—also understand that their current campaign will not bring the end of Israel’s legitimacy as a state. […]

In 2005, the Palestinians of Gaza, free from their Israeli occupiers, could have taken a lesson [of nation-building] from the Kurds—and from David Ben-Gurion, the principal Israeli state-builder—and created the necessary infrastructure for eventual freedom. Gaza is centrally located between two large economies, those of Israel and Egypt. Europe is just across the Mediterranean. Gaza could have easily attracted untold billions in economic aid.

The Israelis did not impose a blockade on Gaza right away. That came later, when it became clear that Palestinian groups were considering using their newly liberated territory as a launching pad for attacks. In the days after withdrawal, the Israelis encouraged Gaza’s development.A group of American Jewish donors paid $14 million for 3,000 greenhouses left behind by expelled Jewish settlers and donated them to the Palestinian Authority. The greenhouses were soon looted and destroyed, serving, until today, as a perfect metaphor for Gaza’s wasted opportunity.

If Gaza had, despite all the difficulties, despite all the handicaps imposed on it by Israel and Egypt, taken practical steps toward creating the nucleus of a state, I believe Israel would have soon moved to evacuate large sections of the West Bank as well. But what Hamas wants most is not a state in a part of Palestine. What it wants is the elimination of Israel. It will not achieve the latter, and it is actively thwarting the former.

In other words, Hamas is sacrificing Palestinian lives by the hundreds in order to score an imagined propaganda victory against Israel. In the face of such irrational hatred, what hope is there for a “diplomatic solution” to the intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

The conclusion from this article and if I daresay your agreement with it is shocking. Hamas is without doubt complicit in the murdering of their own people in Gaza, but to seemingly absolve Israel with any argument whatsoever, in their murderous campaign of killing whole families, children ( even sleeping children) is the worst thing imaginable. And don’t justify their actions with the need to defend themselves.
War crimes are commited daily in Gaza by Israel.http://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/nov/24/israel

Were it not for Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile system, the world would be seeing hundreds, if not thousands, of Israeli families and children being killed, and churches and hospitals and schools being destroyed by the 500+ Hamas rockets. Would that make you feel better?

Once again, if Hamas wants the Israeli air attacks to stop, there is a very simple solution:

Stop firing rockets at Israel, and concentrate instead on building Gaza into a liveable place for Palestinians. All of that is predicated on the a priori that Hamas actually cares about the wellbeing of fellow Palestinians.

After having listened to a few hundred “wise men” from the Gaza strip, I have concluded that there really can be no “peace” between the Israel Nation and the Palestinian Nation. IF the Palestinians were composed of more Christians than currently exist, then maybe. But the Christian Palestinians are only about 5% to 10%. The Muslim Palestinians want ONLY the land back, and no “talks” or “compromises” are possible with them.

It’s a shame, because it means the only solution is genocide. In my opinion, anyone that can, should leave the Palestinian kept areas, and not look back, because sooner or later, they will die.

There is suggestive evidence that the Egyptian government, and the Saudi leadership, are prepared for the destruction of Hamas. That is why we have not heard the traditional anti-Israeli denunciations from many of the Arab nations throughout the weeks of destruction inflicted by the Israelis on the Palestinians of Gaza. . Along with their most intimate allies (with the exception of the U.S.) some of the major Arab states would prefer the region to be free of Hamas. Hamas is not prepared for any resolution of its conflict with Israel — and that feeds into the general chaos that has enveloped the region with the advent of the so-called “Arab spring.”. The non-radical Arab states fear the uncontrolled expansion of the radical Islamists — at everyone’s cost.

There is no doubt whatever that Hamas is deliberately exposing Gaza civilians to attack. This is an old tactic among Moslem groups of various sorts. In Islam, the position of martyrs is an position of great honour. Similar to the Kamikaze pilots of World War II. Their deaths are celebrated and they are guaranteed the highest places in the afterlife. Hamas knows well that the higher the Palestinian body count, the more pressure will be placed on Israel to stop the attacks. Hamas will agree to a cease-fire only when they run out of rockets. Then they will lie low until they have replaced their supply, which may take 1-2 years. The other Arab nations are getting tired of supporting Hamas, but the gullible Western press will continue to condemn Israel for ever act of self-defense.

People dont really understand what is going on over there do they?
Israel blamed palestinians or “hamas” for 3 missing israeli boys with no evidence whatsoever. Israel who already barely allows palestine to survive because they control all their borders and hardly allow them to sustain themselves by controlling how much food and electricity goes across the border. Now this same country starts kidnapping palestinians and torturing chldren in their vast jails to supposedly find the missing israeli boys. But what they are really trying to do is get hamas to retaliate. Which are so many israeli spies in hamas, who knows who is really calling the shots. Now hamas sends rockets over and israel has an excuse to destroy and bulldoze another region of palestine, Why you might ask? To expand their territory and build new settlements for jews, After every “war” palestine gets smaller and smaller an israel gets bigger and bigger, Because when israel “pulls out” they make a new order. This is a systematic land grab that has nothing to do with hamas or terorrism or war. This is genocide and theft.

Yeah, right. Probably the grandchildren of the same group of Zionist conspirators that tricked the Germans into murdering 6 million Jews so they could justify setting up a Jewish state in Palestine – right? And talked 19 Arabs into blowing up the World Trade center. When the Israelis pulled their troops out of Gaza in 2005, they dismantled the Jewish settlements in Gaza and removed all Israeli citizens from Gaza. Just the opposite of what you are claiming. They also provided building materials to rebuild homes and businesses in Gaza damaged in the fighting. Hamas took that cement and steel and used it to build tunnels into Israel so they could sneak teams of killers to kill Israeli citizens.

Hamas will make peace when the last Middle Eastern Jew drowns in the surf trying to reach a rescue ship – (assuming, of course, that anybody bothers to send a rescue ship.) Then Mr. Jones will be happy until they start massacring the Christians.

do all the American know abot the system approach and their Islamic ideology and philosophy. Do they know about Kuhn do they know what Miachieal port mean by the 5 competive forces do they now about Nolan do they know abot Noam Joresky do they know abot Achoff do they heard about Frankland and IS department t LSE and it its mission and its directors do they know about Harvard yale and Stanford business schools and their qualitive research approach. do they know about Rudy Hirechheim and his qualitiative approach DO they know about Ranuaff Granville and his cybernetic American organization ISLAM is already there legally business ansd mangaeriall and hence economicy cybernitically and value systems in addition to economically financially and hence informationally and informatics and hence Isreal must surrender with out blood shed because the time has come and killings is at the door step or in the next door.

No, do you know the 10 Commandments, or the books of the bible, or the names of the disciples or (and on and on and on…)? And how did you get from book study to telling us how Israel has to “quit”? Your argument is flawed because it’s based on an ideology and theory, and not real world facts. The line of rhetoric you are spewing only alienates the Americans from ANY muslim concerns.

Cheap shot, David. Hijjo Tha’s post was filled with names of people organizations and events with no explanation of who these people were or how they are relevant to Hamas and/or Israel. Some of the names were spelled wrong and nothing was explained. What I gathered from his post was his opinion that the Israelis should stop defending themselves and let themselves be exterminated. Is that your view also?

If you like obscure references, how about explaining how Hamas’s actions can be justified in terms of Hegel’s theory of geomorphic andesite and the doctrine of anthropomorphic determinism?